


The Five-Year Job

by ryfkah



Category: Leverage, Ouran High School Host Club
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Heist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-28
Updated: 2011-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-16 00:10:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/pseuds/ryfkah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While fifteen fascinating minutes tracing back revenue streams have given Hardison a healthy respect for Ohtori Kyouya – “Hey now. Kid,” he says, squinting at him, “this is not your house.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Five-Year Job

Hardison looks down at the pile of unconscious men with guns under Eliot’s feet. Then he looks at the circle of extremely conscious men with guns surrounding them. Then he lifts his hands in the air and aims a disarming smile at the nearest gun-wielding man, who does not smile back.

Eliot, meanwhile glares for a moment longer, then snarls and throws down his kebab skewer.

Hardison lets out the breath he’s been holding. “All right,” he says. “You got us.”

“Thank you.” The teenaged boy with the notepad brushes through the two men at the top of the circle carelessly, as if he owns them.

Which, Hardison realizes, after a moment to identify the kid, does not make much sense, because while fifteen fascinating minutes tracing back revenue streams have given him a healthy respect for Ohtori Kyouya – “Hey now. Kid,” he says, squinting at him, “this is not your house.”

“I have investments worth protecting here,” Kyouya explains coolly, and Hardison winces as the light from above bounces off the kid’s glasses and into his eyes. “Your associate has already damaged certain of our company assets.”

Eliot blinks, and then glances down at the unconscious men with guns. “Give ‘em a day or two to rest up, and they’ll be fine,” he offers, and then looks again. “Okay, maybe a week or two. Uh, a month, for that guy.”

“Actually,” Kyouya says, “I was referring to –”

“Kyouya!” The second voice is also male and also teenaged, but speaking Japanese rather than Kyouya’s flawless English. Fortunately, Hardison is actually pretty decent at Japanese, thank you _Naruto_. “Kyouya, this is _terrible_!” The voice turns out to be attached to another recognizable face; Tamaki Suoh barges through the ring of armed guards, displaying a few scraps of charred and disintegrating fabric in his hands.

“Calm down,” Kyouya answers, also in Japanese, without looking back over his shoulder. “I’m taking care of it.”

Eliot stares at the fabric and says, blankly, “The closet we flash-bombed?” Eliot is also pretty decent at Japanese, thank you, yakuza, or, alternately, thank you Japanese ex-girlfriend. Hardison’s money is actually on a yakuza Japanese ex-girlfriend.

“Do you have any idea what authentic period costumes generally cost?” Kyouya frowns downwards, fingers flying over his calculator. “The imported cloth-of-gold Renaissance breeches alone –”

“Haruhi would have looked so _cute_ in this,” wails Tamaki, clutching his hair in overwhelming sorrow.

“With all the damages taken into account, that comes to –” Kyouya taps the final key, and then holds up the calculator.

They’ve been running kind of short after the last few jobs; crime in Japan is expensive. Hardison squints at the number, and does a few frantic calculations in his own head. “Yeah, all right,” he says, crossing his fingers that his sums are right and sending Sophie a silent apology in his head. She can get around to setting up that foundation in a year or two. “Look, if that’s all, we can send you a check or something, okay?” He’s got most of what they needed on a USB in his back pocket, and the Ohtori kid doesn’t seem inclined to call the police. The Ohtori family wouldn’t have much cause to go crying over the downfall of the Suohs, either; if they play their cards right, they just might be able to pull this one off after all.

Kyouya glances back over at Tamaki, who has stopped clutching at his hair and is now punching a number into his phone. “Yes,” he says. “Well. Overall I really don’t have any objection to your plans for the Suoh family matriarch, but –”

“Haruhi! Haruhi, I have terrible news –”

“I’m afraid that for the sake of some long-term plans I’m going to have to ask you to hold off for –”

“What do you mean, you’re in the - who is – is that those unscrupulous – what?”

“Hm,” Kyouya says, and returns his full attention to Hardison. Hardison returns the favor, and tries not to pay attention to the men with guns, who are all assiduously trying not to pay attention to the putative heir to the Suoh family, who is curled up against a wall growing mushrooms. Basically there’s a lot of careful not-noticing going on all around. “Let’s say five years,” says Kyouya, as smoothly as if they were standing in a boardroom and not in the middle of a ring of armed men in the Suoh kitchens with unconscious souffle-covered bodyguards scattered all over the floor. “For certain assets to mature.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Eliot, flat.

“I could just ask you to hand over the USB drive in your pocket,” Kyouya says, patient. “But I don’t really have the time to spend playing this kind of game with your organization all the time. I’m offering an agreement instead. Five years, and we’ll consider your debt cancelled. Do you understand, Mr. Ford?”

Hardison jumps, and then jumps again as Nate says in his ear, _Five years is a long time to our client_. Hardison resists the temptation to curse; great time to show up, Mr. Ford, where were you five minutes ago when the teenaged megalomaniac decided to drop in with all the armed goons? However, that might be considered unproductive, so instead he says, butter-smooth, “Mr. Ford says, five years might be a problem.”

Kyouya’s eyes flick back to Tamaki again, and he smiles – a calm accountant’s smile, but if he really wanted people to believe that, Hardison thinks, he’d ditch the creepy-ass glinting glasses. At heart, Ohtori Kyouya is not a kid who minds unnerving people. “Let us,” he says, “take care of that problem.”

 _I don’t trust him_ , says Nate, and “Can we trust you?” snaps Eliot, almost at the same time.

“In the long run, corruption is bad for business,” Kyouya says, cool still turned up to the max. “And –“

“Oh, come on, Kyouya!” Tamaki has, at some point in the last thirty seconds, recovered from his mushroom-filled sulk. He comes up now and drapes his arm over the other boy’s shoulders, grinning at Hardison and Eliot from under his doubloon-gold fringe. Hardison can almost feel twenty bodyguards emphatically continuing to refrain from comment. “Why don’t you just admit,” he says – and it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that Tamaki Suoh also speaks excellent English – “that even a low blood pressure evil overlord is afraid of getting scolded by Haruhi?”


End file.
